How Activists Saved Journalists in Syria

Time reports: The Bab Amr district of Homs had already been descending into hell when the Syrian army apparently homed in on satellite phones being used by foreign journalists there and sent mortars their way, killing the American reporter Marie Colvin and the French photographer Rémi Ochlik on February 22.It would take eight days before all their surviving colleagues were finally able to escape, even as Bab Amr lay shattered and grieving, its remaining residents — 4,000 people or so — exhausted by the weeks of bombardment, suffering from hunger and the gnawing cold. As of Thursday, Bab Amr was abandoned too by the elements of the Free Syrian Army who were using it to launch attacks on the regime of President Bashir Assad. The rebels had run out of ammunition. Syrian activists said on Thursday they had been forced to bury Colvin and Ochlik, after struggling for days to keep their bodies refrigerated with dwindling fuel supplies.


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